IT has been an extraordinary week for the humble carrot. On Monday it was announced that the carrot is Britain's most popular vegetable.

Seventeen per cent of people voted it their favourite. The potato came second with 15 per cent, and the detestable broccoli third with 13 per cent. The sprout was the least popular.

Last Friday, Sainsbury's announced that it is returning the carrot to its roots by selling purple carrots - the natural carrot colour. Meanwhile, at the Chelsea Flower Show, the National Trust is growing yellow carrots which the Victorians knew had a strong, sweet taste.

Carrots come from Afghanistan where, 5,000 years ago, they were white, purple, red, yellow, green and black. Not orange.

Carrots were the ancient equivalent of Viagra because they were supposed to make men more ardent.

As a love potion, the carrot spread. But it did not become orange until the 16th Century when the Dutch ruled the waves. In South Africa, top Dutch carrot breeders spotted a mutant carrot - most South African carrots were yellow, but the mutant was orange. What better way to pay tribute to the House of Orange which ruled Holland than to breed an orange carrot?

And so the carrot, as we know it, was born.

The most famous myth about carrots was born during the Second World War. Top British carrot breeders developed high carotene carrots for pilots fighting the Luftwaffe's night-time raids.

The RAF proved remarkably successful and, just like David Beckham's mohican will undoubtedly spawn imitations, so the British public copied their wartime heroes and started devouring large quantities of carrots.

However, the carrot's part in Hitler's downfall is often over-stated. There was little evidence that carrots helped pilots see in the dark - the development of radar proved far more far-seeing. But there was a glut of carrots across the country and so it suited the British Government to peddle propaganda about a carrot's qualities.

Finally, a piece of wisdom from Ireland where there is an ancient proverb that would be extremely foolish to ignore: "Never bolt your door with a boiled carrot."

ON Tuesday morning, England's footballers played in the Jeju Stadium on the volcanic island of Jeju-do in South Korea. The stadium is in the shape of an oreum - a volcanic crater - and one of its canopies looks like an up-turned Te-u - a local fishing boat.

The Jeju Stadium is one of ten built for the World Cup in South Korea in the last couple of years with great imagination. The roof of the Daegu stadium imitates the curves of the thatched roof of a Korean house; the suspension cables in the Jeonju stadium represent the 12 strings of a Korean musical instrument; the Ulsan stadium looks like a crane because the bird is the symbol of the town.

On Tuesday afternoon, England's politicians once again debated building a new national stadium at Wembley. Even though the last game was played there a couple of years ago and £120m of Lottery money was given to the project, the old stadium is slowly decaying and no one knows the whats nor wheres of its replacement.

The crane may be the symbol of Ulsan; Wembley is the symbol of England's inability to get her act together.